Nutrition in solid form, in particular in the form of a tablet, has the advantage of being easy in use by the consumers. For example in preparing infant milk formulae the scooping of powders is difficult potentially leading to dosing mistakes and/or to spilling of the powder. Therefore there is a need for tablets for nutritional formulae that are not in a ready to feed format. Since tablets are also a convenience product, the tablets should be convenient for use. This means that the tablets should be strong enough to be transported in a box or flow wrap and handled by the consumer, while at the same time the tablets should dissolve quick enough, i.e. comparable with the corresponding powder formulae. When preparing a tablet with a nutritional composition, the problem is to strike the balance between the hardness and friability of the tablet and the solubility of the tablet.
In the art when looking at tablets in general, dissolution rate has been addressed by using an effervescent system e.g. bicarbonate that helps to dissolve the tablet quickly. However, such systems cannot be used in food compositions since this would lead to lots of practical issues like foam formation, increase in salt content, etc. Other approaches use specific powder features like loose density, and specific free fat content and compressing circumstances.
Drawbacks are in the significantly limited processing possibilities for making tablets, potentially leading to increased cost price.
EP 1048216 discloses tablets including tablets based on infant formula.
EP 1769682 discloses tablets with a specific porosity and free fat content wherein the tablets contain dairy proteins.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,241,975 disclosing tablets prepared from dairy products
The inventors of the present invention therefore tried to find an alternative for preparing a nutritional tablet.